The Unofficial Apple Weblog has some screenshots of the latest Leopard build, and since MacRumors says they’re real, they’re of course real. Anyway, they show off Safari’s anti-phishing features, as well as the improved previews in the Finder. There are also some shots of iCal’s new look.
I believe they’re real based on the simple fact that there is nothing exciting to see there…
I’m looking forward to upgrading to Leopard, but feature screenshots like that won’t make me switch.
Why don’t they add some transparency, blurring, and wobbly and water effects? It’s quite a waste not to make use of their OpenGL-based graphics system, especially since now people are doing this on Vista and Linux.
Just like IE7 and Moxilla 2.x safari 3 has an antiphishing tool. It blocks blacklisted websites with a warning: “Google has identified this webpage as fraudulent..” Don’t you agree with me that Google is becoming dangerously powerful?
Opera’s taken a more privacy-friendly approach.
Don’t you agree with me that Google is becoming dangerously powerful?
Google has always been dangerous to privacy, web standards and interoperability.
Google has always been dangerous to privacy, web standards and interoperability.
That was sarcasm, right?
Well the privacy part is certainly true.
Not more than any other company.
Ok I understand the privacy concerns of google, but them being dangerous to web standards and interoperability I don’t understand!
They try to be interoperable on different browsers, OS, etc.
Their software for Windows, Linux, and Mac. They are making progress on getting their sites to work with every browser (IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera).
They seem to use generally accepted web standards..
Please explain.
Edited 2006-10-20 16:44
They seem to use generally accepted web standards..
Check their code for yourself. Their sites are chock-full of proprietary Mozilla/Netscape and Internet Explorer “extensions”.
Moreover, even those sites that are kinda-sorta standard (though not close to being correct HTML/XHTML) purposefully block alternative browsers (Safari, Opera, Konqueror). It’s not a technical issue, as having those browsers fake their user agent string allows access. Even when this issue is brought to Google’s attention via e-mail, phone calls and letters, they refuse to rectify the situation.
Microsoft tried a similar ban on alternate browsers for Hotmail; however, MS backed down within weeks of protest. Google continues for months or years (GMail, Google Maps, etc.), crippling alternative browsers. Usually, these browsers are forced to introduce broken code and hacked-together workarounds in order to meet Google’s insane demands.
From the very start, Google has sought to steamroll over other companies in any way that they could. The only reason they support Firefox is because it is Microsoft’s primary competitor in the web browser arena and it is in Google’s best interest to hurt Microsoft.
The new Yahoo mail beta does this too.
The fact that Google appears in the dictionary as “search the internet” is bad enough.
The fact that Google appears in the dictionary as “search the internet” is bad enough.
Well that’s the verb “to google”, with a small ‘g’. It’s really no different to the way in which many people (in Britain, anyway) will refer to using a vacuum cleaner as “hoovering”, regardless of the actual manufacturer of the cleaner — a bit annoying for pedents, but fairly harmless.
Same as well for pdas being refered to as ‘palms’ (thats slacking off somewhat though.), tissue paper being called ‘kleenex’, inline skates being called ‘rollerblades’, etc etc. A name brand gets really well known and popular and people start using it to refer to anything thats the same as the brand they are most familiar with.
I mean, really, do you call non ‘pop tarts’brand “toaster patries” ? I think not
thats ‘Toaster Pastries’.. but you get the idea.
No, I don’t agree.
We know exactly what Google is up to, and we don’t have any real dependencies on Google. It is easily replaceable, so no – it’s not dangerously powerful.
It blocks blacklisted websites with a warning: “Google has identified this webpage as fraudulent..”
What I also find unusual with that dialog is that they say “You should close it immediately”, yet the default appears to be the “Leave Open” button.
No that is not the default button. If it were default, the button would be pulsing.
That ring appears because the person taking the screenshot has turned on full keyboard access, and the ring appears to indicate which button has keyboard focus (always the first button in a panel).
Thus, hitting enter or return has no effect. Hitting space will push that button.
The idea is to have no default, thereby forcing the user to stop and think for a moment.
There has been mention of these changes, including a significant shift in the user interface of iCal. There is nearly nothing to show.
Of course, the Mac-o-lytes will blather about how wonderful these things are but what we’re not seeing is more important than these things.
It’s nice to have parental controls and help against phishing but these aren’t exactly mind-altering details–they’re more like mind-numbing details.
Hopefully the finder defaults get a look-in. They’ve not changed from 10.1 and really show their age. Auto-arrange is off, so you go into a folder you’ve never used before, and all the files are in a pile on top of each other, with a couple a few miles to the right that you have to scroll to see. Previews are off by default too. We’ve seen a screenshot before of leopard finder now allowing you to change the icon spacing (as you can do in Windows) which is a welcome addition, the files are too widely spaced in Finder for my comfort. (I prefer 48×48 with 32 spacing in Windows)
Be some sweet looking, clean and consistent interfaces there, keep up the good work.
Edited 2006-10-20 18:28
My guess is that Leopard will come in both plastic-white and plastic-black (user-selectable, of course), to match the color scheme of their products. And finally they’ll be done with all the brushed metal and such.
that might be interesting, but i can’t image them really doing as such.
at least this shows iCal is no longer crushed metal and has gone Unified. now, for the finder…
Ever since I started using UNO (http://gui.interacto.net/) I just don’t give a f–k anymore. The GUI on my Mac is optically completely consistent now.
Is it just me or does none of the features in osx.5 seem that exciting.
Although, it could be said that that OSX is quite mature, thereby it doesn’t need anything in the way of major features.
Are you kidding? If internet search is now responsible for majority of retrieved information, and internet search equals Google, Google=information. It may become VERY dangerous, it’s all just a question of what pages will Google put to the front. Google has a record of favouring democrats over republicans in Google News, so it would be nothing new.
And as for the screenies, I recall several news threads ridiculing XP’s thumbnail view, and voila, Leopard makes them news!
Edited 2006-10-20 23:05
And as for the screenies, I recall several news threads ridiculing XP’s thumbnail view, and voila, Leopard makes them news!
Yes – well KDE has had them for about 5 yrs – and yes they aren’t a lot of use, I turn them off, leaving only the actual images, jpegs etc, and the HTML pages and PDF’s – previews of these can be quite helpful for identifying things in a large directory full of assorted stuff. Particularly since downloaded PDF’s always seem to come with names like ABC1234567.pdf – if I forget to rename them on saving them it’s difficult to know what they’re about!
“Google has a record of favouring democrats over republicans in Google News, so it would be nothing new.”
So what you’re saying is that Democrats will favor one set of information over another and present to support their side of the story.
What…you mean the Republicans don’t do the same? Give me a break.
whine whine whine whine whine whine
I agree that the stuff we’ve seen in Leopard so far is pretty boring. Yes, Time Machine is nifty and Spaces is cool, but beyond that…?
But, as Steve Jobs said, Apple has some super-secret stuff in the pipeline they’re not ready to show yet. I’m almost certain they’ll show it off in January MacWorld, and then WOW! If not, then I hope they’re ready for a significant backlash amongst the Mac faithful and a truly missed opportunity from the Vista-hungry PC crowd.
Some of the cool stuff, I think won’t be noticable until you use it. The Todo server is brilliantly simple, I think, being able to converge strings of text and documents from anywhere in the system to your todo lists. If it’s multiuser and ties in automatically with iCal, you have a simple collaboration tool immediately. I’d bet there would be a way to seamlessly integrate Google Calendar with the Todo server. Make a todo and it automatically appears in Google Calendar. How about that?
You can probably also build your own front end to this to access todo’s, like it’s possible with Mail. RSS feeds of todo lists, anyone? Would seem natural to me now that Mail.app suddenly gets the ability to read RSS feeds.
This is just one thing, but it solves a bunch of cumbersome problems, without having you going out spending money on apps that do this for you in a more limited way. If they manage to introduce just 2-3 other similar things, simple and powerful things, very well thought out things, I’m there for Leopard.
“But, as Steve Jobs said, Apple has some super-secret stuff in the pipeline”
Too bad Steve is about as thrustworthy as Ballmer (or any other top-level exec), eh?
Edited 2006-10-21 07:45
…of keeping the “cool stuff” under wraps. Even if they don’t have something super-amazing-fantastic in the pipe, the changes/additions they’ve noted or that have been revealed so far are enough for me to want to upgrade.
I DO hope Finder gets a revamp. It is in need of some work. The downside of that is I will have to wait for CandyBar, APE and other things to catch up so I have my all my fun stuff.
But I will 100% make use of the TimeMachine, anti-phishing, etc. I wonder if Camino will have that anytime soon (I prefer Camino over Safari). I also wish they would update their PPTP/VPN tools.
I’ve also had issues with Airport in 10.4.x and have switched to a hard connection. Here’s to hoping Leopard is stable and somewhat bug-free!
Content Advisor in IE is pain if you would like to block a site for your kid. If you block the site for your kid (user) then you are also blocked from that web page too ( administrator).
Apple when they introduce a feature they introduce something that will work without pain, while MS produce things that makes you wish, shout, or cry.
The only problem with apple is their hardware prices which they keep ignoring it.
You’re the one ignoring their hardware prices.
I just dont get the anti-phishing thing, Is it that mac users(myself included) are too lazy/stupid/ignorant to check the addy of a link before they click? Anad anyway there are lots of antiphishing sites out there. Open Dns already has anti phishing built into its dns servers.. rather foolproof.